Upvoted because you're generally correct, but it's too easy to take this advice and turn it into "my project has external value because I invested my time and e

Upvoted because you're generally correct, but it's too easy to take this advice and turn it into "my project has external value because I invested my time and energy into it". Because that's the labor theory of value and it breeds jealousy and discontent, as people who worked smarter than you reaped more rewards. Part of the problem that most capitalist societies deal with is that value is perceived largely through how much money it is worth, which is an external measure of value. The insight is that we cannot allow our internal measure of worth to be dictated by how much it's externally worth; we have to define that internal sense of worth by and for ourselves. We have to be able to say, "this project is worth something to me because I invested my time and effort into it, and if it's not worth something to you, that's OK too, because I don't get to dictate to you what something is worth to you just because I devoted my energy to it, but in the meantime, my energy is worth something to me, and as such devoting my energy into a project makes it worth something to me, and that makes the daily effort Good."